Online documents

Ontario's day-cares need better funding [CA-ON]

Letters to the editor

Author:

Saarikoski, Tracy

Publication Date:

26 Apr 2004

Source:

The Sudbury Star

Availability

See text below.

Dear Editor:

Re: Looking after Walden's '"Little Angels" - April 15.

I am pleased that there is an increase of federal money for child care in the last month's federal budget (an additional $29 million for Ontario this year under the Multilateral Framework Agreement), however these funds fail -- by far -- to even begin to make up for the destructive cuts to provincial child-care funding by the former government (a $160 million reduction in the annual budget since 1995).

This is why the new Liberal government must follow its election promise to spend the federal funds committed in the Early Childhood Development Agreement (the ECDA which made almost $1 billion available to Ontario over five years) on regulated child care.

The new Liberal government needs to ensure that the $58 million earmarked for regulated child care in Ontario in 2004-05 flows to municipalities as quickly as possible. Greater Sudbury would be even greater if we continued to support our families with high-quality funded programs.